Rise of the Buckskin Beauty

You guys got me thinking, I know for a fact we have an old cruiser's inc Tono/hardtop/bimini deal fit for a 23' sitting our log house in WI, i believe it was meant to snap to the wooden windshield.

I'll have to pull it down next summer and snap some pictures, see if someone might be interested in it.

Joe - that thing is really freakin' cool.

TRBenj wrote: 75 Tique wrote: The younger crowd thinks they are hideous (led by Tim B). Larry, I like to think my taste is half way decent... all except one boat I own is older than I am- so I like to think that my dislike for that top isnt purely generational. A lot of people think Im old school, but at the same time, not everything "old" gets a "pass". Ugly is still ugly! I do hate it less on the San Juan than I do the Mustang though... what a way to ruin an otherwise beautiful boat! Bill, remember that Joe's hull in question is a good 2' longer, probably a foot wider and a good bit heavier... it could very well be a 40mph boat at best with the lower output (210hp) 318.

Good point Tim. I was thinking joe had the same hull. I think the top would be awesome BTW.

you should bring those you seem to be the dart throwing champion around here

joe did you get my email?

Joe, could you possibly take closer pictures of the dash? I smoothed my over to take care of the myriad of holes. I can sort of tell from your pictures the layout but would really appreciate some up close pictures. Another difference I noticed is that your throttle lever is located on the gunnel, whereas mine was mounted on the dash. I think I might switch mine over to gain more dash room. Thanks again!

JoeinNY wrote: If you can get me a picture of your shifter and the center cap of your steering wheel I would appreciate it.

Same steering wheel as Reid's '68SN, no?



IIRC, its a metal wheel... I remember it being darn heavy. Ive never seen another one for sale like it- I think theyre super cool (so let me know if you swap it out for something else, ha).

My boat didn't come with a steering wheel or throttle shifter. I have started from scratch on this boat and it has been a struggle every step of the way. I do like your seating arrangement and I have considered doing something similar in mine, just with a smaller front passenger seat and not covered in school bus vinyl!

could be the same cant really tell from that little picture of Reids that you posted.. but I will take your word for it. I keep trying to get them to buy a laser scanning head for our faro arm at work, I could 3D scan and have it 3d printed.

JoeinNY wrote: could be the same cant really tell from that little picture of Reids that you posted.. but I will take your word for it. I keep trying to get them to buy a laser scanning head for our faro arm at work, I could 3D scan and have it 3d printed.

Ahh, gotcha. Ive poked at it in person... same insert, just a different color. Hadnt seen a blue one before- pretty cool.

3d scanning and printing... now we're talking! Do you already have printing capabilities?

JoeinNY wrote: There is the correct two handle control on ebay at the moment.. but for $150 it isnt so pretty

It's not bad, when you can sell your current one for $75-80.....

It will take two restore kits for that tank. Need my tumbler?

I have been a little behind in progress updates, although it is hard to call removing hardware, tearing a boat a part, and cleaning out the debris progress.. but that is the current goal. I was hoping by the end of the long weekend to have this thing down to bare glass and tucked into a corner so I can get the shop situated how I want it to allow work on the rest of my winter projects. IE, take off all hardware in preparation for wetsanding, remove floor, remove foam, remove engine mounts, remove 3 out of 4 stringers.. etc.
I removed the last of the fire suppression system and a few other small bits on Thursday morning and started to pull up the carpet and the disgusting mess that used to be the floor. No pictures of that.. but I will caution that just because you have not pulled the pin on a fire suppression system does not mean that it might not go off unexpectedly whilst you are removing the linkage. Said system, if attached to a mushy floor with rusty lag bolts may in fact come dislodged and possibly attack with a fair amount of mass, speed, and due to the cloud of co2 and debris stealth. In such situations I can only recommend a timely and haphazard retreat. Next time I encounter such a system I will bring the boat outside, strap the tank down, pull the handle and run… even if it came out intact who wants an early 70s vintage full tank of co2 hanging around the shop waiting to go off.   
It was sunny and mid 50s on Friday so it was a good day to move the boat outside and begin to remove the rubble.
This is the designated rubble collection area at the beginning of the day



(a dump trailer would be the best option here but apparently my brother in law had just sold his, a pickup wouldn’t be a bad option either, but I settled for putting down a tarp to collect the small bits)
This is as far as I had gotten it before I decided I had gone as far as I could inside…







Including the tag I finally undercovered under some plywood and carpet



Once I removed the “loose debris”



I could begin to remove the rest of the floor and foam. I believe the foam to not be original, I don’t know if it had foam originally or not but I don’t think it did. Certainly it didn’t have a fiberglass floor from the factory, not even the thin skin ones that one would find under a floor pan boat, or a boat that had vinyl flooring over plywood over foam. It has 4 stout longitudinal stringers, no major bulkheads, and had evidence of but no longer present floor supports. Nothing has ever been glassed to the side of the hull, so my theory is that it had a plywood floor attached to those supports with no foam under it. The side vents are channeled to a small half round fiberglass tube, that would have previously dumped under the floor into an open cavity.. air could then pass through the secondary stringers (which were two pieces with a gap in the middle) and be accessible to the engine compartment via airgaps under the motor box next to the main stringers which were one solid piece, except for a circular cable pass through.



In the latest “restoration” the foamed floor pockets meant that the side vent tubes were plugged with foam, and for good measure the port one was additionally blocked by the remains of a critters winter food store.



Again part of the latest “restoration” channeling the cables/wires through a rubber hose through the foam.. possible but not enjoyable, they also found need to cut and splice all the wire.. so it has all got to be replaced.





I still find the broad tined pitch fork to be the best overall tool for foam removal…

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Since the two boats were sitting next to each other I tried (but failed) to show the relative size to a 1994 SN.. the boats were lined up so the back of the cockpits were approximately even and standing about where the dash starts on the 94 there is still considerable distance between me and the dash on the 65. As mentioned before here is almost no dash overhang relative to the size of the boat so this thing is all cockpit.   Not having a big closed bow area or a foamed vent box in this boat greatly reduces the complexity and unpleasant nature of the teardown/grinding portion of stringer replacement on this boat.   I am almost looking forward to it.



By this point the debris pile was starting to look pretty good. Some of those foam chunks are 2 square foot plus..







What a mess – sad thing to do to a boat







Almost lost my tools in the debris trying to remove the rudder.



I haphazardly decided to throw a block of foam under the rudder before pulling the bolt and letting it drop and got a lucky catch..



I don’t believe I had to do any grinding to remove the secondaries.. they came out mostly complete, good enough for templates, again they appeared to be two pieces straight from the factory:



Unfortunately that was as far as I made it before the weather turned.. made some more progress Saturday and Sunday but no pics yet..

Joe,

What material are you using for stringers? Wood or composite?

Great Work,

Donald

Great pictures Joe, I can almost smell it too.....